1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to occupant protection apparatuses and, more particularly, to an occupant protection apparatus for appropriately protecting occupants of a vehicle by increasing a tension applied to a seatbelt.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, as disclosed, for example, in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2000-55105 (pages 5-7 and FIG. 5), a protection apparatus of this kind protects an occupant of a vehicle by increasing a tension of the seatbelt according to the occupant's physical feature when it is judged that there is a possible crash or impact of the vehicle. In this protection apparatus, the occupant's physical feature is previously stored in a database so that data of each occupant is read out using a fingerprint sensor, an ID card, etc.
However, in the above-mentioned conventional occupant protection apparatus, a large strain may be imposed on an occupant since the occupant is required to input data to the apparatus so as to store the physical feature of the occupant. Moreover, in order to retrieve each occupant's data, it is necessary for each occupant to make a fingerprint check each time or use an ID card, which may be a problem in that each occupant is enforced to do a complicated procedure.